A limited war is one in which the belligerents do not expend all of the resources at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise in a specific conflict.
Eastern groups at the time of contact with Europeans often would not kill all enemies but would capture many for adoption to replenish their own populations.
At the beginning of the Korean War, US President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur strongly disagreed with each other.
The disagreement escalated to the end of MacArthur's command and career after he had exasperated and frustrated Truman's limited war policy.
Richard Barnet, who quit the State Department in 1963 after because he disagreed with Kennedy's incremental Vietnam escalation, described his misgivings in 1968: "The President had rejected major military intervention as a conscious policy, but he had set in force the bureaucratic momentum that would make it a certainty.
"[3] The War of Attrition, fought between Israel and Egypt from 1967 to 1970, mostly consisted of artillery shelling, aerial warfare, and small-scale raids.